Bradford County Birding Spotlight
October 16-19th, 2026
Pennsylvania Society for Ornithology (PSO) is promoting counties across the state, to explore its hotspots and find as many birds as we can. This will be the 15th county we have spotlighted since we started this birding adventure several years ago averaging 3 a year. To see how and where others have been and fared out, check out this link. https://pabirds.org/county-spotlights/
On October 16th, join us as we lead a 4-day concentrated effort to bird Bradford County! This is a county that we are hitting during the later fall migration season, last year we had a great visit to a county to the east, let’s see what we can do this October going 1 county west. We have bird outings lined up for several days. Bradford currently sits 64th all-time for species out of 67 and 52nd all-time for total checklists. Bradford county is in northern Pennsylvania, bordered to the north by New York state. It consists of rugged hills on the Allegheny Plateau and is drained by the Susquehanna and Chemung rivers and Sugar, Towanda, Wappasening, and Wyalusing creeks. Mount Pisgah State Park is located on Stephen Foster Lake. The county seat is Towanda. It covers a total area of 1,161 square miles. Out of this size, 1,147 square miles are land and 14 square miles are water. It is the second-largest county in Pennsylvania by land size.
As a group, we want to document as many birds as possible during this extended weekend. Birders are invited to tag along with others or explore the county’s game lands, water areas, fields and wild areas on their own terms.
Notable spots for the county can be found here https://pabirds.org/siteguide/pacountypage.php?CountyID=8
Here are the eBird hotspots link https://ebird.org/region/US-PA-015/hotspots
We have created a Discord text/chat group for the spotlight for rarities and group info, to join that, here is the link https://discord.com/channels/1111453242149306441/1466761980118569021 or you can search for the Bradford County Birding Spotlight under the PSO Spotlights & Events.
For anyone who is going to be birding during 4-day birding spotlight, we ask you share your ebird checklists with PSO Birding Data then we can keep track easier. We have also created an eBird Trip Report link where pictures, checklists, etc. will be available for everyone to enjoy.
Here is the link for the eBird trip report https://ebird.org/tripreport/494808
We will be sharing pics and updates on the Bradford County Birding Spotlight event page on Facebook; here is that link https://www.facebook.com/share/1EADyWPgw7/
Birders of all skill levels are invited to join-in and contribute! If you just want to learn more about birds or you can help others and our challenge, we want you to be involved!
More details to be shared closer to the date.
